From the Game Desk

Last time we reported in from the Game Desk, we found ourselves generally unsatisfied with the video game experience and had started a slog replay through old favorite Fallout 4 but this time in survival mode.

The slog lasted a long time.  We played Fallout 4 in survival mode through the rest of November, through December and the end-of-year holidays, and on into the New Year, 2023. We enjoyed it, obviously given the amount of time played, but at some point, though, the lack of progress in the game's storyline got us to wondering what the point of it all was.  

In survival mode, one's focus is more on establishing and maintaining settlements and staying alive, and less on combatting enemy factions like in the main game. I'd clear an area (can I drop the "we" now?) for a new settlement, get some crops going, build a shelter and a bed to recover from my battles, and move on to an adjacent area, slowly conquering the game map.  But over enough time, the enemies started to respawn at previously conquered settlements, and the whole Sisyphean effort of conquer-build-rinse-and-repeat began to feel pointless.  

For those familiar with the game, despite the challenges of survival mode, I managed to hunt down and kill the assassin Kellogg, I beat the supermutant Fist in Trinity Towers, and I infiltrated the Brotherhood of Steel on board the airship, Prydwen.  I even beat the behemoth Swan in Boston Common (without power armor!). After several attempts, I finally got through The Glowing Sea and talked with Virgil, but once back outside his cave, after killing off the deathclaw waiting there, I got ambushed and killed by a swarm of radscorpions.  Further progress seemed unlikely, especially after old enemies started turning up again at previously beaten locations. The game was never going to end.

So this week, I started on something new, something that had been in my Steam library for quite a while - A Plague Tale - Innocence.  I'm already about halfway through (it's apparently not a very long game). It's okay - basically, a stealth game where you play as a 15-year-old girl in 14th Century France on the run from the French Inquisition and hordes of hungry rats.  Gameplay consists primarily of figuring out puzzles on how to stealthily get past soldiers and vermin.  Even though the puzzles keep changing and get progressively more complex, a certain sense of sameness sets in after a while. 

It's not unpleasant, although the sameness does tend to limit the time spent each time I log on.  Visually, the game is pretty enough and the characters are reasonably interesting.  It is a relief, though, after the interminable slog of Fallout 4 in survival mode, and it's more enjoyable than some of the games I burned out on last year.  It's just that so far, there's been nothing to fall in love with. But it might be just the thing to rekindle my fading interest in video games without becoming the object of my affection itself.